Can anyone suggest a reliable and not outrageously expensive PCB assembler?
I have had PCBs made through Gold Phoenix but I need someone to assembly smd boards at 25-50unit lots. The boards are 100x150mm with mostly 0603 smd resistors, caps, leds and a few SOIC and one 64pin LQFP.
I am located in Australia but I am happy to consider anyone at this stage. I have used Lil-Brother for a single run but they seem to have disappeared. I think we paid around $25-30/board so something in that price range.
I could do them myself manually but its extremely time consuming and is something I want to outsource.
Otherwise, who do you normally use for PCB assembly?
I am a former customer of Lil Brother as well. They have not gone away, they have just stopped taking in outside jobs. They explained to me that they had many internal projects that had been on hold while fullfilling outside orders. They decided that they just had to stop taking those in so they could move forward with their own. James did not indicate to me if they will ever start to take in outside orders somewhere down the road.
When I said disappeared that is exactly what I found, their website is gone and emails bounce. I would have expected at least a message to say they’d stopped taking outside orders. But when I did a search for them and James, one of the results was that he was sick. Given their disappearance and add in illness, I thought the worst had happened.
Oh well I wish them the best of luck with their own stuff. I found James very helpful in getting my first batch of circuits assembled.
I’d suggest OurPCB if you can stay on top of the assembly process (make very accurate assembly drawings, ask for photos of the first assembled device), and if you are ok with leadtimes 30-50 days.